The Master Plan

Josh Cardenas

What would I have done without Josh? He did the majority of the visual effects on the movie and worked on The Master Plan for TWO YEARS! Unbelievably, I found him in Santa Rosa, too. Now he lives in Marin and works on gigantic movies like Iron Man at The Orphanage in SF. More on Josh: [Visceral Pixel] and [his recent work with DJ Shadow].

Jason Goodman/21st Century 3D

Jason and I met on the first day in our first class in film school, where we pondered the future of 8mm tape splices and lusted after the Mac II/fx (even though the Quadra 840AV was coming out and Jason’s Powerbook was “just as fast as a IIce”). Jason, Gil Jawetz and Stephen Baker at 21st Century did a lot of the “Golf Ball” art and compositing, including the Ultimatte money shot with the the only real movie star in The Master Plan… Dylan!!! (I still don’t think Jason’s over how I cut the whole movie on a six year-old PC.) [21st Century 3D]

Mary Hawkins

Mary’s from NYC, I found her through NYU, and I know for a fact that she’s the one buying the giant boxes of cereal at Costco. Mary did the movie’s opening credits sequence and all the stopwatch graphics. This watch thing was ten times harder than we thought it would be, but she was awesome to work with and got it done. Just when you thought it might not be the 21st century, it’s a little known fact that I have never actually met Mary Hawkins! [More Mary!]

Michael Morehouse

Michael, who, to the best of my knowledge, is the only cast or crew member to actually live in Saudi Arabia, did most of the live-action Golf Ball compositing. This was more than a little tricky, given that all the shots were handheld. A little image stabilization here and motion tracking there, color-correct, wipe and reinstall Windows 2000, and BAM! Done. [YawPitchRoll.com]

Tom Bergstrom

Watch! Tom make a burning-rock burning-handprint effect-thing. Marvel! As Tom turns a lost cat sign phone number into a 555 number. Feast your eyes! As Tom erases gaffer tape on the wall in the mirror scene. And all I had to do was buy the guy a Subway sandwich! (Just kiddin’.) Is there anything this guy can’t do? [More on Tom Bergstrom]

Adam Schuster

Adam lives in Florida and is another Master Plan telecommuter, but we actually have met because he also works for Apple. Adam did many of the naturalistic lighting effects that don’t look like effects at all. The shot above of course, but also the Christmas lights on stage with Virginia (maybe next time I’ll just turn them on) and a lot of other effects that you aren’t going to notice, which is exactly the point! [Atompowered.net]

Chris Tokunaga

Chris Toke was our former Art Director at Filmspeed, and he’s so talented it’s absolutely absurd. The Master Plan isn’t in his Top 50, so I’m not going to bore you with the details here. Check out his website and don’t bother asking me for a reference, JUST HIRE HIM if he’s available. Do it. [Okunaga.com] P.S. Pay him whatever he wants.